Implementing Really Great Reading

Ashley Russell

Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota

Schools of Graduate and Professional Programs

EDUW 699- Independent Studies

Stephanie Belter, Advisor

April 26, 2020

Description
Looking at our Fall Benchmark data, my grade level teammates and I along with
our literacy coaches, noticed an alarming number of students who scored one or two
levels below second grade level in the area of phonics. We were able to put them into
two groups of about 15 students. Once we had those groups we had to come up with an
intense phonics intervention. Our reading specialist mentioned that she was using a
program called Really Great Reading in her small intervention groups. We decided to
give it a try even though we had bigger groups.
Really Great Reading is a research-based phonics program that prevents and
remediates decoding weaknesses in students at all grade levels. Their philosophy and
approach to reading instruction is interactive, explicit, structured and multisensory.
According to their website, “automaticity in decoding is also a critical skill for proficient
reading of texts with strong comprehension. Students who have gaps in their phonics
knowledge are less likely to read with automaticity. They spend so much mental energy
on decoding that their comprehension of text suffers. When students decode
automatically, their mental space is free to focus on vocabulary and overall meaning of
the text.”
The program is broken down into twenty-five units. Each unit consists of five
lessons. Each unit follows the same five-day lesson structure. Lesson 1 has students learn
and practice phonemes and heart (sight) words. Lesson 2 focuses on phonemic
awareness, recognizing short and long vowels in words. Lesson 3 introduces a new
phonics concept such as digraphs, trigraphs, or consonant clusters. In this lesson, students
use magnetic tiles to phonetically build words as a way to practice the new phonics
concept. Lesson 4 is phonics practice. Each student has a workbook with activities called
“Mark It”, Read a Word, Word Sort, Phrases to Read. The Mark It activity has students
underline each phoneme they hear in a word. This requires them to remember things like
digraphs that make one sound. Read a Word and Phrases to Read help students build
fluency and automaticity of heart words and words using new skills. The Word Sort
activity has students read a word, determine what phonics rule it follows and the sound
the vowel makes. Finally, lesson 5 is spelling practice. All the skills from the previous
lessons are reviewed and then students are given a spelling test to assess their learning.

Students Selected
For the initial two groups of students, two of us second grade teachers taught
Really Great Reading during our intervention time (WIN- What I Need). We did this
intervention for roughly six weeks and gave students the foundational skills assessment
(see results for November). After looking at student performance we determined which
students would move on to a comprehension WIN group and which students would
continue with Really Great Reading lessons. There were ten students we decided to
continue the lessons with. Of these ten students I chose to look at four for the purpose of
my independent study.

Implementation Process
The intervention time I had was 30 minutes. I was able to teach one lesson a day,
completing a unit each week. At times it was hard to keep students engaged and focused.
With a bigger group I had students help me with clicking the slides on the smart board,
giving other students a thumbs up if they got something right (being the teacher), and
even correcting their own work with a marker. Students learned the routine of the
program fairly quick so they knew what to expect each day. I had gotten to lesson 12
before assessing students again at the end of February (see results below).

Results
After comparing assessment results to those from November, I was very pleased
with the progress all students made. The assessment had three parts; reading real words,
sentences, and nonsense words. Both the real and nonsense words included CVC
patterns, digraphs and blends. The sentence section included three sentences each with 6-
8 words total. The results in the chart are the number of words they said incorrect per
section. One word wrong equals one error. All four students improved in each of the
three areas of the assessment. Artifact A shows the actual errors students made on each
assessment.

Student Initials November February

Assessment Assessment
(#=errors) (#=errors)
Student A Real= 5 Real= 1
Sentences= 5 Sentences= 0
Nonsense= 8 Nonsense= 3

Student B Real= 3 Real= 2

Sentences= 1 Sentences= 2
Nonsense= 6 Nonsense= 3

Student C Real= 4 Real= 1

Sentences= 4 Sentences= 1
Nonsense= 8 Nonsense= 4

Student D Real= 4 Real= 1

 Sentences= 2 Sentences= 0
Nonsense= 8 Nonsense= 5

Next Steps moving forward

Since starting this paper and Independent Study our country has been impacted by
a pandemic, the Coronavirus. We are no longer in school and are going to begin online
distance learning. Due to this learning only being optional and the entire district is doing
the same instruction, I will not be able to continue to use Really Great Reading phonics
with my group of students. In a perfect world, at school, I would have hoped to continue
the use of this program with the same group of students and continue to monitor and track
these specific four students. In the upcoming units, the phonics skills introduced seemed
to get more complex, moving from simple digraphs to multisyllabic words containing the
patterns they have learned the previous twelve lessons.
This is most likely an intervention I would love to continue in following school
years as I have seen first hand the growth students can make when used daily.
 Artifact A
November February
Student A

Student B
Student C

Student D